


Room 413, Wallace Dorm, January Second

by elle_stone



Series: Tumblr Requests [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Getting Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 21:09:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11631957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: No one who watched Bellamy and Clarke sniping at, bickering with, and insulting each other all through fall semester would believe the scene in Room 413 of Wallace dorm on January second.  Not arguing, not even speaking, they are curled up under Clarke's blanket together, cozy and warm in her narrow twin bed.





	Room 413, Wallace Dorm, January Second

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "I need you to pretend we're dating," requested by anonymous on tumblr.

No one who watched Bellamy and Clarke sniping at, bickering with, and insulting each other all through fall semester would believe the scene in Room 413 of Wallace dorm on January second.   

Not arguing, not even speaking, they are curled up under Clarke's blanket together, cozy and warm in her narrow twin bed. Clarke is leaning back against Bellamy's chest, his legs stretched out to either side of her. He’s twined his arms loosely around her while she holds open a book for them both to read.  

A month ago, any sort of friendliness between them would have been impossible, let alone this simple, instinctive comfort with each other. But then the semester ended, all but one dorm on campus closed for winter break, and all of Bellamy and Clarke's respective friends packed their bags for a month at home. Clarke was lucky enough to already be living in Wallace, but Bellamy had to haul his stuff over from Walden, all the way over on the other side of campus. Worse, the room he'd been assigned was the one right next door to Clarke's. For the first 48 hours, it was hell. They could hardly avoid each other, on a campus so empty and with only one thin wall between them, and the snapping and fighting that had been oddly exhilarating when they only saw each other once every couple of weeks turned stale and exhausting when they ran into each other several times a day. Reluctant conversations over the bathroom sink while they brushed their teeth turned, fairly easily, into daily lunches together by the big window in the cafeteria, and then to shared dinners and evenings in Clarke's room, discussing current events and comparing notes on different classes and professors. 

When they realized they had a remarkably similar taste in books, all pretense of acquaintanceship went out the window. 

They also realized, in a gentle and unspoken way that still, when she stops to think about, causes Clarke no small amount of confusion, that sharing a bed is many magnitudes more pleasant than not, and from there cuddling became part of their daily routine, too. It doesn't mean anything. Except that Clarke's never seen Bellamy so much as put his arm around any of his other friends, and she doesn't usually curl up under soft blankets with hers. She doesn't consider herself an overly tactile person, at all. She just feels better when she's leaning back against his broad chest. 

Bellamy makes a low noise under his breath, a signal that he's ready for her to turn the page. Just as she flips it over, though, the sullen hero's journey is interrupted by the obnoxious buzzing of her phone. 

It must be her phone because Bellamy groans when he hears it, and she has to shoot him a dark look as she lunges forward to grab it off her desk. "Like you've never gotten a text before," she mumbles. 

"Not at such a climactic moment, no," he answers.  

That's got to be a lie, but Clarke doesn't bother firing off a response. She's too distracted by the text: a short "Check Finn's FB" from Raven. Clarke has no idea what that means but it cannot possibly be good. Slowly, she sinks back against Bellamy, thumb poised over her phone and bottom lip caught between her teeth. 

"What does that mean?" Bellamy asks. He's set the book aside and settled his hands on her hips instead, reading over her shoulder out of habit. "Who's Finn?" 

“He’s another freshman,” Clarke answers, still absent, as she debates whether she should answer the text or just do what it commands. Whatever it is, she won’t like it; it’s just a question of what format she’ll get the news in. “We…” She sighs. “We dated last semester. Briefly _Very_ briefly. Then I broke it off and he took it badly. He wouldn’t let it go.” 

“What, like he stalked you?” Bellamy’s voice is already hard and gruff with an implied threat, like he’s just waiting for confirmation before he goes into full-on overprotective-and-stupid mode. 

Clarke cuts that off with a simple, “No, nothing scary. He was just obnoxious.” She’s decided to go the Facebook route, and while she logs in she pictures Bellamy, behind her, pulling unimpressed, disbelieving faces where she can’t see him. 

“Just obnoxious,” he echoes. 

“Yeah. Obnoxious—like posting on Facebook: ‘New Year’s resolution: win back the one who got away.’” She tilts her phone to the side so Bellamy can see. 

"And you're sure that's about you?" He doesn't try to hide the skepticism in his voice, but there's a bit of concern there too, layered underneath. "Maybe he moved on, got dumped again, and now he’s obsessed with a different one-who-got-away." 

"Mmm, no." Clarke shakes her head. "Doubt it. He lives one floor down and we have a lot of friends in common. Believe me, I'd know if there was someone else. This is about me." She logs out of Facebook and sets her phone back on her desk, and in another moment is curled up in Bellamy's arms again. "Raven clearly thinks so too." 

"So, just—tell him again that it's over," Bellamy suggests. "Be forceful about it." 

"You think I haven't tried that?" She tilts her head back and frowns up at him. "No, guys like him...just saying I'm not interested doesn't do it. He thinks he can convince me otherwise. He won't believe it until trying to get to me means getting in the way of some other guy." 

"Like…he thinks if you're with someone else you're like his property, basically, and _then_ he'll back off?" 

Clarke hums in agreement, and Bellamy just grunts, a hard huff of air like he's disgusted at the thought, and wraps his arms a little tighter around Clarke. She pulls her blanket, fallen down by their ankles as she reached for her phone, back up until they're safe and warm beneath it. That’s the best word for this feeling, she thinks: _safe_. In less than two weeks, everyone will come back to campus, classes will start, life will resume. Finn will arrive. He will bother her. It will be annoying. But right now she's cozy, wrapped up in Bellamy's arms in a way that makes her feel warm in some indescribable way, warm on the inside, and content. 

"So what are you going to do about it?" he asks, after a few long moments of silence.  

Clarke sighs, the sound sliding quickly into an annoyed, restless groan. She would have been perfectly okay to let Finn Collins be a problem for another day, but Bellamy obviously isn't ready to let the conversation drop. "Not much I can do, is there?" she counters. "Just keep pushing him off, I guess, until he finally gets the hint. It's not like I'm ready to be in another relationship and even if I were—" 

She cuts herself off mid-sound, tensing up as an idea, utterly ridiculous and doomed to failure, suddenly shoots through her mind. It's a terrible idea. Awful. Silly. 

But...not utterly implausible. 

Bellamy waits a long, tense moment for her to explain, then finally breaks and asks, "What? What is it?" 

"You," Clarke answers, half twisting to look back at him. 

An expression equal parts confused and annoyed distorts his features, and he rolls his eyes at her. "You want to explain that thought a little more?" 

"You— _you_ could hold him off instead. It's simple. I just need you to pretend we're dating." 

Bellamy stares back at her for such a long time and with such utter incomprehension on his face that eventually Clarke starts to wonder if she's broken him completely. 

She starts to say, "Look, it won't be that hard—" at precisely the same moment when he finds his voice again: 

"You really think that would work?" 

The real answer is _maybe_ , but she bluffs with easy confidence: "Definitely. I mean...we're already going to confuse everyone we know." She gestures wide to take in the bed, their entangled limbs, the whole messy domestic scene. Their new easy intimacy, the unspoken elephant in the room. "Our friends will make assumptions. Instead of denying, we could just...subtly confirm." She takes a breath. The words came easily at first, then slow, and she feels her uncertainty growing with each extra moment that she can't read the expression on his face. It's no longer baffled, more like thoughtful, but Clarke has no idea if he's intrigued by the prospect, or terrified. "Let it get around to Finn," she adds, just to fill the silence. 

Maybe it was a mistake, she thinks, to acknowledge aloud just how close they've become. They get into bed together casually, touch each other easily, lean against each other when they're sitting or link arms when they're walking, just by habit, and they never talk about it, and it's never awkward. But maybe now that she's brought it out in the open, the awkwardness will start to seep in. He’ll start to overthink it. Or she will. 

"I guess you're right," Bellamy admits slowly.  

"I am?" 

He grins, unexpected. "Must be a weird feeling, being right for once." 

"Ha ha." She turns so that they're almost face-to-face, and rests her hands on his shoulders to get his attention, to show how serious she is. “Bellamy. Really. Will you do it?" 

"If you want me to, yeah. But I think it's a potentially horrible idea to lie to everyone we know and expect that not to blow up in our faces." 

"We wouldn't have to lie for very long," Clarke promises. It barely even hits her that he's agreed, and so easily, so simply—like it wasn't even a question, like there was no way he’d refuse a favor she asked of him, even a weird and awkward favor like this. 

"And what happens when Finn backs off?" he asks. "Do we break up? What if he starts bothering you again as soon as he thinks you're on the rebound?" 

It's a good question. Clarke has no idea how to answer it, so she stares down at the folds in the blanket and tries to pretend her hands aren't still on Bellamy's shoulders. "I could...claim I'm too broken up about losing you to think about being with someone else," she suggests. 

"And he would say that's what rebounds are for," Bellamy answers. "Plus...” He trails off, the pause just a little too long, a little unnatural: like he’s gathering his thoughts, or his courage. “Plus, it won't be that hard pretending we're together. But it will be really hard to pretend we've broken up." 

"What...does that mean?" 

She's pretty sure she knows what it means. That it will be hard acting the part of exes, hard to not be friends anymore, after they've finally become friends. That he doesn't want to fake the dislike he's put so squarely in the past. That their rapport, their ease with each other, is so rare and so pleasant that to snipe and argue again, all for the sake of tricking some old ex, is truly a waste of incredible luck. 

Or something else. 

Because he did also say that pretending to date her would be easy. 

He shrugs, but the gesture seems out of place. He's watching her, unblinking and serious.  

"It means that I wouldn't have to work very hard to act like I like you," Bellamy says, at last, stilted and slow. He's linked his arms around her. It would be so easy to slot their bodies together, to press their bodies together, to be even closer than they already are. Yet the distance that's left seems too vast to ever breach. 

"It would be easy for me too," Clarke answers. "To act like I like you." 

"So easy that I wouldn't want to stop pretending." 

"So easy that—" Her words are quiet, almost inaudible, and her throat's gone dry. She swallows hard and tries again. "So easy that maybe we shouldn't stop pretending." 

"Or we shouldn't start pretending." 

No pretending, Clarke thinks. No faking. Just giving in to the thoughts she'd never allowed herself to voice, never been able to admit even to herself, in her most private moments. The thoughts she's had ever since their first lunch together, in the empty cafeteria as a light snow fell outside, and he told her about the history class he'd taken last semester, and she’d been amazed to see him so animated and intense and involved. The thoughts she had even before that, watching him brush his teeth in his low-slung pajama pants, shirtless in the too-hot dorm bathroom with the steam covering the only window, trapping them in. And even before that, if she's really, truly honest with herself, because there was something equal parts intriguing and infuriating about him when he talked all that shit last fall, and she just wanted to bite his head off, but she also wanted to kiss that stupid smirk right off his lips. 

He's not smirking now but he's smiling just a little, almost shy, as she leans in until their noses bump. 

The distance all but closed now, she can feel his breath on her lips.

It might be Bellamy who, in the end, kisses her first. It doesn’t matter. All Clarke knows is that she never wants to let him go. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for going the Finn-is-the-villain route because tbh I find that fairly lazy but this was just a quick ficlet so--that's my excuse.
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/)!


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